1. 1
Contemporary Crime
Reduction Strategies
Crime and Deviance
A2 Sociology

2. 2
In pairs
Discuss and then write down a selection
of crime reduction strategies which have
been introduced since the introduction of
New Labour in 1997.
Example: electronic tagging

3. 3
Introduction
Within this session we will explore a variety of
contemporary crime reduction strategies which include:
• A brief exploration of social crime prevention
• Community crime reduction (Neighbourhood Watch)
• The physical environment
• Situational crime prevention
• The development of CCTV
• Zero-tolerance policing

4. 4
Social crime prevention
Social crime prevention focuses on
changing the motivations of offenders
through changing their social
environments.
This approach aims to develop
activities which deter potential or actual
offenders from offending in the future.
To simply ‘keep them off the street’.
Common activities include:
• Pre school and after school clubs
provided by schools
• Youth clubs
• Sport clubs e.g. football, rugby, boxing
etc.
• Activity camps over holiday periods

5. 5
Community crime reduction
This approach focuses on developing a strong sense of
community to eradicate the fear of crime and to reduce actual
crime.
De Tocheville (1994) claims there are three key issues which are
key features in developing a sense of community and spirit.
• Tolerance, with this in place interaction and respect will develop,
and people will begin to listen and learn from others.
• Reciprocity “as doing a favour for someone else without
expecting anything in return immediate, confident that down the
line someone will pay you back.”
• Rational collective decisions, which have been carefully thought
through.

6. 6
Community crime reduction
A selection of different approaches have been
suggested by a wide range of sociologists, some
of which are provided in the following list:
• To develop social networks (Stacey 1969)
• To develop a sense of inclusion (Cohen 1985)
• Natural surveillence, interaction, and
communication (Jacob 1961)
• To develop a sense of belonging and to value
public space
• “Active streets are safe streets” (Hillier 1990)
• A positive environment will generate positive
mood – removing the fear of crime and violence
(Newman 1979)
• Natural surveillance is considered equally
important to the likes of CCTV technology. It has
shown to reduce both the fear of crime and crime
levels (PSCG 1999)

7. 7
Neighbourhood Watch
Neighbourhood Watch is a community strategy which
has been found to reduce crime, the fear of crime and
opportunities to commit crime (The National
Neighbourhood Watch Association 2003).
Neighbourhood Watch is supported by the government
and works in partnership with other agencies such as
Victim Support and Help the Aged.
Neighbourhood Watch emerged in Britain after success
in America. By the late 1980’s there were around
153,000 Neighbourhood Watch Schemes in England
which covered over ten million people.
Neighbourhood Watch schemes have been found to:
• Promote a community spirit
• Promote natural surveillance – to become the eyes and
ears of the police
• To reduce the fear of crime
• To reduce levels of crime

8. 8
Community crime reduction
Considerations:
• When a sense of community has been lost it you need to ask the question will
it ever come back? (Jones 1961)
• One particular area which fails to achieve a sense of community are areas of
predominant student residence e.g. Fallowfield, Manchester. High levels of
crime are often found in these areas and this has been down to the lack of
interaction between residents (Coleman 1990).
• Some groups e.g. farmers are often excluded from communities because of
their distances from them.
• Is allowing the community to do the policing a good thing?
• The process of developing a sense of community can take a very long time.
Success will not be immediate
• Community crime reduction has been described as ‘fantasy land’ crime
prevention
• The approach has been found to reduce the fear of crime but there is still
deep divisions about how effective community approaches are in reducing
actual levels of crime.

9. 9
Community crime reduction
Considerations (continued):
• Community strategies assume that criminals come from
outside the community and not from within it. The possibility
that the residents who you are trusting to be your ‘eyes and
ears’ are actually the criminal is ignored.
• Neighbourhood Watch schemes have found success in crime
prevention. However these successes have only been found
in middle-class communities and not from within working-class
communities (Hope 1995)
• Laycock & Tilley (2002) argue that this is because many
middle-class communities have a high fear of crime. This in
combination with the fact that middle-class communities suffer
from a lower level of crime than the rest of society creates a
situation where success in crime reduction is more likely.

10. 10
Physical environment
The physical environment and the features within it
have also been argued to reduce both the fear of
crime and contribute towards crime reduction.
The environment should be effectively laid out. The
streets, footpaths, and cycles should all be designed
effectively to encourage people to use the facilities,
without fear, and this will present a more pleasurable
and safe experience for the public.
• To provide good visibility (to be well lit)
• To be near residential areas (to encourage natural
surveillance)
• To be free of blind spots
• Routes should be well connected, inclusive, and
accessible (Newman 1972).
Poorly utilised pathways can lead to the opportunity of
crime. Too many routes diminish the sense of place
leaving it to be isolated and abandoned (Northampton
County Council & Kettering County Council 2002).

11. 11
Physical environment
Consideration:
Much of the effort to alter the structure of
communities in order to reduce crime has not
been successful or sustainable (Hope 1995).
It is takes a long time to implement, it is
expensive, making it unpopular with
government, because it offers not short term
‘fixes’.

12. 12
Situational crime prevention
Situational crime prevention focuses on target hardening
and target removal of objects making it more difficult for
the offender to commit criminal offences.
Target removal – to remove objects which are the target
of criminal activity.
Example: To ensure employees wages are sent into
bank accounts, eliminating the risk of robbery of payroll
or of employees who would have otherwise been paid in
cash.
Target hardening – to make crimes more difficult to
commit – physical security measures such as burglar
alarms, car locks, and property marking. None of these
methods completely reduce the risks but make the crime
more complex and/or lengthy to commit – increasing the
possibility of the offender being caught or giving up on
the crime.

13. 13
Situational crime prevention
Ron Clark developed an array of different situational crime prevention techniques. He
placed his techniques into 3 different clusters. They are as follows:
1) Increasing the effort
Target hardening (steering locks in cars, bandit screens in banks)
Access control (ID badges)
2) Increasing the risks of detection
Entry/exit screening (baggage screening in airports, automatic ticket gates, formal
surveillance (security guards, speed cameras)
Surveillance by employees (park attendant, CCTV systems)
Natural surveillance (street lighting, neighbourhood watch schemes)
3) Reducing the reward
Target removal (removal of car hi-fis when car not occupied, phone cards, identifying
property, property marking, vehicle licensing)
Removing inducements (graffiti cleaning, bum proof benches (Newman)
“crime prevention is often possible and sometimes easy” Pease (1994)

14. 14
Closed Circuit Television (CCTV)
CCTV has been credited for an enormous
amount of crime prevention.
The technology became widespread in the
1990s in response to the growth of situational
crime prevention
Perhaps the best example of the success of
CCTV cameras was in 1975 when they were
installed in the London Underground for the
first time. Over a period of 12 months
following the installation of the cameras a
reduction of thefts by a total of 27 per cent
were recorded.
Criticisms of CCTV:
• Eye in the sky – you are always being
watched
• People need to man all of the CCTV cameras
• Although CCTV may serve as a deterrent. It
may result in offenders deciding to commit a
crime elsewhere where there is no CCTV and
this could potentially result in the offender
committing a more serious crime.

15. 15
Zero-tolerance policing
The idea of zero-tolerance policing was first
coined in the 1980s
The approach aims to address petty offenders
who are viewed to have not respect for their
community.
The approach was aimed at minor offences
It was viewed that control within the community
would return if petty offenders were punished for
minor offences before they progress onto more
serious crime.
The biggest success story of zero-tolerance
policing was in New York in the late 1990s. The
major at the time Rudy Giuliani (pictured)
implemented the policing strategy and saw an
immediate reduction in levels of crime.
Police focused on small geographic regions, and
took strict immediate action on all crimes. The
aim was to nip criminal activity in the bud.
Within Britain the only notable success of zero-
tolerance policing was in Middlesborough under
the authority of Superintendent Ray Mallon.

16. 16
Zero-tolerance policing
New Labour and Zero-tolerance policing
The Crime and Disorder Act (1998) saw the introduction of
anti-social behaviour orders and child curfews. These
introductions were associated with zero-tolerance policing.
Tony Blair proposed the introduction of order maintainence
orders into 25 crime hotspots in Britain e.g. Moss Side,
Manchester.
Problem:
The 25 areas had become labelled crime hotspots.
Labelling areas could potentially make the situation worse.

17. 17
Zero-tolerance policing
Problems with zero-tolerance policing
• There is the risk of further damaging the relationship between the
public and the police
• The approach only offers short term results – the inevitable result is
that offenders will move to other areas to commit crimes
• The police may over react – this could result in the harassment of
unpopular minorities e.g. juvenile youth, immigrants
• Police may focus their efforts on social groups who do not comply
with the police personality e.g. working class estates and ethnic
minorities (especialy young, Afro-Caribbean, males)
The Macpherson Report (1999) officially recognised the police force
of England and Wales as being institutionally racist.
The documentary ‘the Secret Policeman’ (October 2003) shown that
even since the groundbreaking Macpherson report the situation has
not changed.